Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Science. 2013 Aug 2;341(6145):526-30. doi: 10.1126/science.1238677. Epub 2013 Jul 29.
The evolution of social monogamy has intrigued biologists for over a century. Here, we show that the ancestral condition for all mammalian groups is of solitary individuals and that social monogamy is derived almost exclusively from this social system. The evolution of social monogamy does not appear to have been associated with a high risk of male infanticide, and paternal care is a consequence rather than a cause of social monogamy. Social monogamy has evolved in nonhuman mammals where breeding females are intolerant of each other and female density is low, suggesting that it represents a mating strategy that has developed where males are unable to defend access to multiple females.
社会一夫一妻制的进化已经引起了生物学家一个多世纪的兴趣。在这里，我们表明，所有哺乳动物群体的祖先状态都是独居个体，而社会一夫一妻制几乎完全是从这种社会系统中衍生出来的。社会一夫一妻制的进化似乎与雄性杀婴的高风险无关，而雄性亲代照顾是社会一夫一妻制的结果而不是原因。社会一夫一妻制在非人类哺乳动物中进化，在这些动物中，繁殖的雌性彼此不能容忍，雌性密度低，这表明它代表了一种交配策略，在这种策略中，雄性无法保护自己获得多个雌性。
